Better living through empiricism

Religion

May 30, 2015

Bedeviled by deadlines and anxiously seeking to persuade a Governor who seems deaf to the appeals of even the business community, travel blogging has long been on hiatus. A year ago today, we had already been in Kyoto a few days and that fact has cast our minds and hearts back. And though memory may cloud, it is fortified with over nine thousand photographs, a set of rails ever ready to take us back on a journey again.

The previous day, we had traveled to Osaka, but today our destination was much closer, a legendary shrine in the mountains surrounding Kyoto. We arose that morning, not early enough to outrace the heat, and caught a local train to Fushimi Inari, shrine to the patron Kami of rice and business. If you are not familiar with the shrine, then your first image, perhaps a series of ornate buildings in traditional Japanese architectural style and likely painted orange, is not wrong per se. It is just radically incomplete because behind those initial buildings is Mount Inari.

There is a trail up that mountain, one with smaller shrines, innumerable small memorials, twists and turns, steps, and troops of often paired fox statues, the later being the messengers of the shrine's patron. But remember, this is a lead shrine to one who blesses business in a country that for a time gave America a run for her money on commerce and that has been built up over a thousand years. Here devotion is not paid through a cavernous prosperity gospel mega-church but through thousands of torii gates surrounding pilgrims on the ascent to the summit.

Stay tuned for the hike itself, undertaken on perhaps the hottest day of 2014 we experienced in either Japan or the United States.

September 16, 2014

While my wife and mother were cooling their heels at the the closed Modern Transportation Museum, I was at a different station, searching for the Osaka Human Rights Museum. It was a bit of a walk from the station, made longer by my misreading of the map. I ultimately gave in and turned on data roaming to pull down some digital navigation assistance. Thankfully for you, dear reader, I'm not subjecting you to another post (primarily) about wars, past or present. This museum is primarily focused on the human rights situation in modern Japan and many of the displays, including AIDS quilts and rainbow flags, were instantly recognizable even though the displays were in Japanese.

The first zone of the single floor of exhibits was entitled Shining Light. This section could be a bit sign-heavy, but there were pictures to help and I got both an English audio guide and a printed notebook with translations to help. The displays were also rich in photographs and pictures taking on issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQ rights, the rights of the disabled, and even a significant section on children. My comprehension level wasn't quite high enough to grasp how some of the displays might have been different than their equivalent in the United States, although I know that the struggle for gender equality in Japan is very much ongoing.

I dwelled the longest in the second zone, Living Together/Creating Society which focused on ethnic minority groups within Japan as well as other communities facing human rights issues, often for health or environmental reasons. Displays included rich coverage of Korean and Chinese immigrants, the Ainu people, and native Okinawans. In the Korean section, I found particularly affecting a set of captioned home videos on the post-War Korean community in Japan including a celebration in Kyoto of the liberation of the peninsula on the first anniversary of Victory in Japan day. The section on the Ainu and the Okinawans both focused on their living culture, although of course in the latter case the U.S. military base adds a whole different set of issues to the discussion.

One piece that did particular catch my eyes was a flag that was both instantly recognizable and unfamiliar. To the left is a was the banner of a Christian group in Japan, a red crown of thorns on a black field. The museum really did do an admirable job getting at the history of a range of groups and the last section on Dreams/The Future as well as the staffers in the front office and bookstore all left me feeling good about the Japanese activist community.

I left a bit before closing, rushing back to the loop train to try to get a half hour in at the Modern Transportation Museum, which unbeknownst to me had been closed this whole time. I somehow managed to miss Kate and Mom on the platform and wandered around the building once before running into them. Happily, we did have one fond train story coming out of that particular excursion. At the transfer station on the way to meet up with Moti and Francis we spied the poster on the right, celebrating the 110th anniversary of Osaka's transit system. One of the booth attendants saw us doing that and rushed up, but gladly this was not a fusspot of the paranoid American-style. Instead, the gentleman had just recognized us as transit geeks and gave us three post card copies of the poster to send out as we wished. That encounter brightened our day and took some of the sting out of the missed connections at the museum.

August 24, 2014

Jishu-Jinja is a moon apart from the rest of Kiymizu-Dera. Stairs wind up to a cluster of close-packed small buildings including a number of places to buy charms. The shrine is also a satellite in that it backs onto the hill rather than being surrounded by the larger temple as was the case in Ginkaku-ji. Such joint arrangements mean that it is often a bit of a challenge to discern temples from shrines, although after having played that game in 2002 in my cultural arts class I did try to regularly train up my mother in telling the difference. The sometimes colocated places of worship and the commonality of many elements between various branches of Buddhism and Shinto reflect a larger intermixing in Japanese religious life.

The term is syncretism rather than the Christian concept of ecumenism. The majority of Japanese people don’t profess a particular faith but do engage in both Buddhist and Shinto practices at various stages of life. To try to de-exoticize that a bit, every culture has rituals and traditions particularly when it comes to birth, marriage, and death. In the U.S. context even secular weddings often have Christian wedding accouterments. I’m told that they have become popular in Japan, and indeed I saw a fair number of ads to that effect.

Also, traditions that persist are often appealing in their own right. Moti’s friend and our gracious hostess Mina-san did take the challenge of the shrine to wander between the two stones embedded in the floor of Jishu-Jinja with her eyes shut. She had ready help, as the rest of our group had all had the blessing of having found terrific matches, although with my father’s passing a few years ago we did only have two couples. The main obstacles of the walk are the other visitors, although to my surprise there weren’t very many attempting the walk on that day. The ground atop was flat, although if your quest is heedless and rushed, you could speed past your goal and face disaster on the stairs. However, there’s no restriction from being helped by a potential partner or, in this case, friends. By tradition, it means that any matches will take some help from others, but that hardly seems a terrible burden to bear.

Finally, in the picture to the left,just behind the statue of patron god Ōkuninushi, is a helpful reminder that some parts of Japanese folk practices may prove more familiar than a Western traveler might first think. The three foot tall rabbit is no Easter bunny, but instead played a role in the stories of the god’s successful match. As seems to be common in stories the world over, this hare was a fairly gentle trickster, one that got in over his head and paid dearly for it. I was born on Easter and since I’m not Australian I’m quite fond of rabbits and do like taking pictures of them where err I see them. I’ll leave to my treasured readers whether this indicates a tendency towards being a bit of a rogue although I do confess that I enjoy garden vegetables (that I pay for).

August 22, 2014

After finishing the Philosopher's Walk, we were ready for lunch. Fortunately, Moti’s friend Mina-san had recommended a place for us to eat. It was a prix fixe menu with ten distinct bowls per person on a tray, each having a serving of a different culinary treat. This is not an uncommon style of Japanese meal. We ate at a long thin table along a plywood wall with Venetian-inspired art hanging from it. The size of a truly small Japanese eatery may be familiar to a Manhattanite, but is fairly unfamiliar throughout the rest of the U.S., as space is rarely at that much of premium.

We then met up with Mina-san herself on the way to our next attraction, Kiyomizu-dera. My memory had tricked me on the approach to the heritage site. I was incorrectly thinking it was further out of town, but instead we climbed directly from the streets of Gion to the entrance gate. The day was quite hot, but I recall the elevation helping. The aquatic theme of the complex certainly didn’t hurt; the name Kiyomizu means pure water and refers to a cascade down the foothills on which the mountain was built. As the picture on the left shows, the giant blocks were quite real, a consequence of renovations. Which is only fair as the current wooden buildings date back to 1633 and were constructed without nails.

The main building has a vast balcony, from which you can gaze out on the hills, see a pagoda dedicated to easy childbirth, or look down at the stone building where the water flows out of the hill and into the extended cups of waiting visitors. The view I most remembered from 2002 was looking back at this balcony, but before we would get there some of the group would brave crowds to walk up to Jishu-Jinja.

That Shinto shrine to Ōkuninushi, a god of love and good matches, is accessible through the Buddhist temple in a way that is not at all unusual in Japan but represents a blending of religions that I’m used to only seeing in ecumenical collaborations often driven by necessity or seeing in pictures of the trips to the Holy Land where sites are revered by multiple religions operating in close proximity. We’ll pick up with the visit to that shrine tomorrow.

August 02, 2014

Kyoto was Japan’s ancient capital. It is overflowing with temples, shrines, and history. The closest equivalent for the United States may be Philadelphia if the historic core were both far older and scaled up. Amusingly though, there were more odd moments of familiar culture than even Tokyo, although part of that is that hip hop is a bit more popular in the present capital. The Omerice (Omelet + Rice) let us sample a fairly common Japanese take on a western classic, although my dish with yuba, layers of the skin of soybean milk, was tasty but particularly unfamiliar. Nonetheless the Beatles were playing on the sound system in the second story dining room.

We then finished our walk from Kinkaku-ji to Ryōan-ji temple, which apparently translates as the Temple of the Dragon at Peace. It is known for its dry garden and I read of it in 2002 although I still need to verify whether I had a chance to see it on that rainy day more than a decade ago. As is often the case, the temple grounds have far more than just the elements its most known for. There are traditional gardens, with a central pond, that all visitors first pass by. After ascending the stairs, the temple building itself is a remarkable mix of white plaster and find architectural detailing. The interior has illustrated mountain landscapes or floral depictions, the former being a favorite of mine that I tend to associate more with Chinese art.

The paragon of Zen gardens itself has more than a dozen stones, although they are arranged such that you are not likely to see them all from a single position. Several of the clusters of stones blend together when viewed from a distances but are clearly distinct when gazed at directly. I don’t know the specific theology or aesthetic behind the arrangement, but it certainly does reward study from a range of perspectives and contemplation.

After leaving, we meandered the remainder of the path around the pond, seeing both ducks and turtles. The ducks were more common, and a favorite of Francis dating back to childhood, although I went with the turtles in this instance because it had the better broad picture of the pond and perhaps also because of my University of Maryland bias.

Our next stop was another Zen temple, Daitoku-ji. The day was coming to an end, and we proved only able to visit one of the four sub-temples. Based on the walking book we had with us, subsequently returned, that temple was strongly associated with Sen no Rikyū, a pivotal figure in the evolution of the Japanese tea ceremony. I had the opportunity to participate in a tea ceremony in 2002, at a different temple that I’d gotten confused with Daitoku-ji. However, it was still interesting to wander the moss garden grounds and read once again about the history of the ritual.

One critical thing to note about the ceremony: it is meant to be a place apart. The entrances can be fairly small, require humbling ducking, and are not conducive to carrying a sword. The practices do promote a certain equality among the participants, which may have contributed to Hideyoshi ordering Sen to kill himself, an incident allegedly prompted by Sen placing an image of himself near the top of a gateway the leader of Japan passed through. How can such a fancy ceremony promote harmony? I think the short answer is that clear rules of interaction can be empowering to those with less prestige and social capital.

After Francis successfully rescued himself from the closing temple, we proceeded out to a bus and back to central Kyoto.

July 02, 2014

After reaching the base of the mountain we bid a fond adieu to Toshi. Our next priority was clear: food. Fortunately, like popular tourist spots everywhere, there was a town happy to ply wares to satiate our hunger. In a precursor for the remainder of the trip, there were also vast crowds of students. This appeared to be field trip season and Moti told us that the volume was far greater than he was really used to. While the picture-taking was sometimes more challenging as a result, sharing the sights with the Japanese students was a consistently enjoyable experience and the times later in the trip where we interacted were all the more so.

My mother then took a break to sit by the coast, write postcards, and be accosted by deer as the rest of us went on to Itsukushima Shrine. I managed to make a cultural faux pas on the way in by sitting at the edge of the stone basin used for washing one’s hands on entry. That said, they still let me in and we were able to wander the orange painted halls of the complex. When the tide is up, the wooden floors would be consistently surrounded by water, but at this hour we could clearly see the flood plains.

In a touch of home, the muddy earth also was home to tiny crabs. Not the sort we normally see (and eat) in Maryland but a smaller type that reminded me of the burrowing crabs of the west coast of Florida. I wasn’t aware of such a phenomenon and may have to check out their place in Japanese myth. The rest of the shrine was a bit more familiar. There was a stage for Noh theater, miko (shrine maidens) selling incense and charms, and places to leave prayers behind or to get your fortune read.

Many of those elements can also be found at Buddhist temples, which made it challenging when I quizzed my mother later on identifying whether a place of worship was a temple or shrine. I primarily learned the difference thanks to my 2002 cultural arts class. The easiest way to tell typically is that the presence of Torii gateway, like the famous one on the left, indicates Shintoism and thus shrines. There’s any number of other signifiers, from the color orange to hanging paper, that also are good clues, but the Torii are the most reliable. That said, there are times when small shrines can be found in temples so sometimes you just have to read shrines and books to be sure.

After touring the Shrine we went on to a tasty meal, primarily consisting of the local specialty: anago (salt-water eel). I enjoyed it, although my favorite is still unagi (fresh-water eel). That said, when I was checking the wikipedia pages to get the words right, I saw that there are apparently real sustainability concerns around unagi, so I should probably make that a rarer treat.

After dinner we road the ferry back to the mainland and then took the train back to Hiroshima for our last night in the city.

June 26, 2014

The trip to Miyajima from Hiroshima is quite straightforward. If you have a JR Pass, just grab the train to Ono and ride the ferry over to the island. Both are covered. There’s also a tram line that runs parallel which may well be cheaper for non pass-holders. However, it’s a good thing we took the train as it meant we met Toshi, our on-and-off companion for the day. He noticed Moti was actually reading the Japanese on the platypus-labeled signs that told tourists how many stops until they had to get off (why a platypus? short answer: Japan loves cute things; longer answer: the platypus is the mascot of JR West and also appears on their smartcards). Toshi is a civil engineer who works in Germany but was making a trip back home on vacation.

Between my leaving my pass at home and earlier trip to the park, we hadn’t made it out in time to see the Itsukushima Shrine’s fabled torii gate at the high tide, when it appears most to be floating in the water. On the day we visited, that happened around 8 am and low tide struck at 2 pm. When the tide is entirely out, the gate is fully accessible by land and the floodplain around the shrine is similarly dry. Nonetheless, even in the middle stages, the gate is a sight to see and the deer are almost as prevalent as they are at Nara. We didn’t make that site of legendarily large wooden temples and bowing deer trip, although I still have fond memories of it from my 2002 excursion.

In the morning, we did not actually stop in the shrine, although we did take our time to look at the torii gate while the water was still in. The architecture does do a beautiful job of accenting the natural beauty of the bay and the mainland and island mountains. While we did look around the town, it was primarily a waypoint on our journey to the base of Mt. Misen. That hike would take us most of the day and is the subject of the next post.

August 09, 2013

Perversely, I have been too busy writing about Israel for work to write about it for the blog. The other complicating factor is that my visit to Jaffa was my favorite tourist site on the trip. The twisty alleys of this city feel ancient. That sense is deceptive; much of it was rebuilt by the Turks after Napoleon's bombardment and he was only of many conquerors this millennia-old port town has encountered. It resides above a hill to the south of Tel Aviv and was the historic entry port for Jerusalem.

I learned of its history on a museum tour beneath the town’s main courtyard. My timing was excellent; there were only two people on the tour and the guide had the knowledge to sate my curiosity. The second half of the museum was a multimedia-enhanced encounter with the archeological remains of prior civilizations. While Jaffa may be better known for Andromeda’s Rock and for Simon the Tanner’s hosting of Saint Peter, I was most charmed to hear a story of one of the city’s conquests. The local magistrate had broken away from the Egyptian empire when a colleague arrives to resupply him with scores of jar holding food and drink. Come night, their true contents were revealed as soldiers climbed out of their clay shelters and retook the city.

A perhaps more reliable bit of Jaffa history involved grave markers. Some of the city’s Jewish residents had been buried with a menorah carved into the grave cover. The design was what you see on right and had a tripod base.

That wasn’t the only distinctive marker I encountered; tile labels were embedded in the masonry work for many of the homes and stores. The one on the left sat above a monastery and provided some much needed softening for the hard metal door. As the cross indicates, Jaffa was the main place I encountered the other religions of the Holy Land. As previously mentioned, I passed a mosque on the way there and the city itself had a lovely cathedral, the tower of which you can see in the second photograph for this post.

After much wandering about and the tour, I was ready to take Guy’s brother’s sound advice and get lunch at Old Man and the Sea. That restaurant was a place to eat to excess - Guy would approve - and it is where I’ll pick up next post.

May 19, 2011

The first floor of the seamstress shop was a religious school. It was only enclosed on three sides with pillars being the only structure in the interior. There were students of a mix of ages represented and some of them were particularly talkative. "What's your name?" and "Where are you from?" appear to be some of the most commonly taught English questions. We didn't manage a full conversation by any means, although Mom had some luck with both french and English. We mostly spoke to the two gentlemen in the foreground, the lad in white hopes to be a journalist and the one in red a doctor. Near as we could tell both were pro-revolutionary, but that isn't a surprise really.. Our guide had mentioned that some English training is on the curriculum in the public schools, although special language schools are popular and offer an immersive approach.

The religious part of the education involved memorizing passages from the Quran. Homework involved taking home a slate with verses etched upon it, which actually reminds me of stories I've heard about the education of Abraham Lincoln. I think the poetic nature of the language helps the students. I suspect that despite the archaic language the King James version of the Bible might be easier to commit to memory than the New Revised Standard Version. One girl gave a lovely recital of some of the text she'd memorized. I did go through Sunday school, although there wasn't that much memorization involved and I'm glad of that. However, I suspect that it is a pedagogical technique that's fairly easy to deploy in places where educational resources are comparatively scarce.

April 28, 2011

Ramses the II, or Ramses the Great, was a successful conqueror who guaranteed his place in history by the incredible measures he took to ensure that he could not be forgotten. This is shown all over Egypt, but for the moment it makes a good way to introduce his work in Luxor temple. He built and expanded temples, but he also made sure that he laid claim to older sites and statues by having his name, in hieroglyphic cartouche format, over that of prior rulers. Rejecting the sentiment of "turnabout is fair play" he then commanded that his cartouche be chiseled incredibly deeply into the stone, to ensure that such a rewrite could not happen to him.

Statues of Ramses II guard the entrance to Luxor temple, and he never seems happy to have just one statue of himself when he could build two or four. That said, the pharaoh may defend himself by noting that statues do fall down and their faces all too often are eroded, which is all the more reason to make backups. At least the statues didn't always have the same pose, he would sometimes change his headdress or even his height between statues. This also happened when depicting the gods, and I suppose this reflected different aspects of himself or just was meant to keep things visually interesting. However, we don't really see any Ramses at leisure, Ramses making a silly face, or the like.

Perhaps the least charming aspect of Egyptian temples is their tendency to depict chains of captured or beheaded foes, the pharaohs beating down enemies with their maces, or a sitting depiction of the pharaohs stepping on various rivals. As a testament to the range of peoples on Egypt's borders, these enemies tend to come in at least two ethnicities shown to the left and right. In this particular display each enemy had a cartouche with the name of the captured city, like a conquest tracking info-graphic out of the game Civilization. If I ever find an image of a bunch of these little guys pulling down the overarching figure of the king, I will snap it up in a second.

If you were an archeologist studying a mall, a "you are here" sign is among the best finds you could hope for. It would give an overall picture of the malls original dimensions and labels for various parts. A promotional image, would be a reasonable second best alternative. Such a picture could show the overall design of the mall and people using it in a typical manner. Luxor temple has the latter, and its shown on the right. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out an effective way to really highlight etchings, so you'll have to make do with seeing a bit of an outline in the left two thirds of the image.

What's shown is the front of Luxor temple, what's called a pylon. These two towers with an arch in between are a template for Egyptian temples. Ordinary citizens couldn't go past the pylon. They were limited to seeing decorations on the exterior and to viewing the icons of the gods on those special occasions when the priests would bring items to a window. However, there were still grand processions that were open to popular participation. The person in the right part of the image is leading a grand parade through the avenue of the sphinx from Karnak temple to Luxor Temple.

Forbidding all but a few people from even entering these grand monuments seems like a blasted waste to me. If the god are going to ask people to worship them, allowing visitors to come through the front door every now and then seems only reasonable. However, in fairness to Egyptians, just seeing the front itself must have been pretty dang impressive.

August 21, 2009

We visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral twice during our trip. The first time was just walking the grounds after arriving on an early morning flight. The second time we paid to go in. The donation required was a bit steep, particularly since the store had closed and for various reasons that was one of my main reasons for going. Oh well.

The cathedral itself was rather unique. In addition to a plethora of statues and various other pieces of art, it had no small number of flags, usually martial in origin, that in many cases were so old they were quite threadbare. Seeing them like that had a definite power to it, almost like viewing a ruin. I do think that American memorials should probably make more use of ruins when the commemorate the victims of some destructive act. Symbolism can be powerful, but it is very difficult to match the psychology effect of seeing that which remains and not an abstract version of it. I am a definite fan of the Vietnam memorial, but for 9/11 I think we would probably have been better served by keeping more of the remains of the buildings themselves.

On a less portentous note, two interesting fact about St. Patrick’s. First, unlike the one in New York, it is not a Roman Catholic cathedral. St. Patrick far predated the breakaway of the Church of England, so this isn’t a huge surprise really if you think about it. Second, the most famous deans of the cathedral was Jonathan Swift.

After visiting the cathedral we wandered around Temple Bar and had dinner at a crepe place. There were a fair number of buskers in Temple Bar as well as at the pedestrian mall at Grafton street. Generally speaking they were all pretty good and got a few coins from me. There were also a fair number of homeless people around, not more than I see in DC but more than I expected. They also tended to look younger than I typically see back home. Also, as a quick factual footnote, we actually rode the light rail after seeing the cathedral, but I don’t think this chronological aberration is really a huge deal.

June 02, 2009

Al-Arabiya has just reported that, under pressure from the United States, the Secretariat-General of the lower house of the Egyptian Parliament invited ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc to attend Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo on Thursday.

The delegation will include Dr. Saad Al Katatni, leader of the bloc, who said that the invitation “came as a compromise solution between the American administration and the Egyptian government, considering that there is increasing pressure on the administration from the American press on the necessity of meeting with all members of opposition and other influential forces…”

In other good news, Brotherhood members are being allowed to return to the legal bar. Katatni credited the administration’s actions to pressure from the U.S. press. Regardless of the motivation, this is excellent news. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement, as one might expect, but a non-violent one despite oppression from the government. I don’t think that even with 5 billion some dollars in aid a year to Egypt we’re really in a position to suddenly democratize the country, but we could do a lot more to work by getting over fears of Islamists.

I’m now much less worried about the Cairo speech. If this is how they’re setting it up, than the administration might find a way to balance dignity and democracy support after all. We’ll know for sure on the fourth.

March 04, 2009

Douthat has been doing some ruminating on Christianity and Darwin. The short version is that evolution’s greatest challenge to Christianity isn’t that it explains the origins of humans. Instead, the problem is the extent of violence and suffering inherent in the mechanism. Also, for any that put even symbolic weight on the Garden of Eden myth, the creative destruction of evolution precedes the ‘Fall’ of humanity.

I tend towards subversive readings of Eden, though not to the extent that I feel the need to write stories in which my protagonists constantly eat apples or travel to Earth-like planets to destroy their apparent utopias. That said, as was the case with David Plotz, I found that reading a good chunk of the Hebrew bible (and Revelations) was more than sufficient basis to completely undermine the idea that evil was something unique to fallen humans.

In any event, Douthat goes on to discuss how this gets handled in Christian fiction, notably by C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. First he quotes a reader summarizing later Tolkein writings:

Tolkien says that Morgoth -- the original Satanic figure responsible for the fall of the elves and (implicitly and off camera) the fall of humans -- imbued the physical world with a large part of his evil essence: "Just as Sauron concentrated his power in the One Ring, Morgoth dispersed his power into the very matter of Arda, thus 'the whole of Middle-Earth was Morgoth's Ring'". This explains why, from the elvish point of view, death is the "gift of men" because it gives them a ticket out of the fallen, Morgoth-tainted world. The problem with this from a orthodox Christian perspective is that death is supposed to be the punishment for the Fall and not part of the solution for the Fall.

Douthat provides the C.S. Lewis example:

C.S. Lewis, Tolkien's fellow Christian fantasist, developed this theme in The Magician's Nephew, by having Jadis, Queen of Charn (and the future White Witch) consume the Narnian equivalent of the fruit of the tree of life, which comes equipped with the warning that anyone who eats of it under the wrong circumstances "will find their heart's desire and find despair." When Aslan is asked, later on, about the fruit's effect, he answers: "She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery...."

This particular tact is perhaps one way to reconcile with death, it’s a way out of this troubled world. That’s actually a view I associate with Buddhism more than anything else, enlightenment as a way to overcome suffering. Buddhism, or at least some variants, are often thought to be one of the traditional religions that’s easiest to reconcile with scientific findings.

However, that interpretation, regardless of Christian or Buddhist origin, tends to leave me cold. I love life. I’ve experienced enough suffering to begin to understand why the day may come when I don’t feel that way. But really, immortality mainly seems to be a curse when you’ve got the depredations of aging and no friends to share it with. An outright evil heart may preclude that later but most of humanity manages.

February 13, 2009

The American Scene is a group blog, my favorite writers on it are Noah Millman and Reihan Salam (I also read a fair number of Peter Suderman's reviews). Since it's a group blog with a changing cast it's no surprise that it can be a bit uneven at times, so caveat emperor there as with any group project.

Linker’s whole project – “the liberal bargain” – rests on the
proposition that absent a neutral arbiter without metaphysical
commitments you inevitably get social conflict. I pretty much disagree
with that proposition whole-hog – I don’t think liberalism is (or can
be) a wholly neutral arbiter without metaphysical commitments (indeed,
I think this partly because I agree with some of liberalism’s
metaphysical commitments); I don’t think such an arbiter would enable
you to avoid social conflict (what would compel the loser to abide by
the verdict?); and, for that matter, I think you can have devastating
social conflict without any real disagreement about metaphysical
commitments (those metaphysical commitments themselves may in many
cases be “superstructure” rather than “substructure”).

Myself,
I would like to see a liberalism that is both more confident and more
humble about its own truths. More confident: don’t defend the sexual
revolution by saying, “why not?” but by saying, “here is what we have
gained – here is the positive good, here are the virtues of
the life we now lead.” Don’t attack creationism by saying, “that’s
smuggling sectarian religion into the public square” but by saying,
“science is a magnificent human achievement that you are defacing, and
science matters too much to me to stand idly by while you do that.”

The most thoughtful atheists--let's call them liberal atheists--have
always understood that the impossibility of negative proof is a crack
through which the gods, no matter how ruthlessly banished from the
human world, forever threaten to return. These atheists--whose ranks
include Socrates, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, Albert Camus,
and Primo Levi--responded to their lack of certitude, to the invariably
provisional character of the beliefs by which they oriented their
lives, in a supremely philosophical way: with equanimity. Accordingly,
they did not go out of their way to act as missionaries for unbelief.

I'm no fan of Dawkins or Hitchens because I disagree with some of their arguments and because they're fraking obnoxious. However, I can't see why athiests evangelizing is any worse than any other set of beliefs seeking to spread itself. They can obviously go to far, but so can everyone else and everyone else has a longer tradition of being obnoxious. I think the need to exclude such evangelism comes from having a pluralistic civil religion as the neutral arbiter Millman refers to above. I think that approach has its uses as kind of a shorthand that saves us from having to argue from first principles every time. Nonetheless, we must be able to make those arguments; I rather strongly believe Millman's closing point:

Cultivation of skepticism and doubt will never be enough; you’ll need
actual alternative certitudes to push against to be sure that you
actually know anything. And, if you’re really a liberal, you have to
leave open the possibility of being convinced that one of your liberal
truths is actually, well, false.

December 27, 2008

If you believe in that sort of thing, do you think people from a range of religions can get into heaven? As a recent Charles Blow op-ed in the NY Times discussed, at least sixty five percent of Americans do (Hat tip Dave C. for sharing this). I’ve actually discussed this Pew study before, but subsequent to the initial results they went back to determine what people meant by other religions. Here’s the results to that query. Short version, some 60% of Americans first and foremost think that Catholics, Protestants, and to a slightly lesser extent Jews are covered. At around 50% Muslims, Hindus, and Agnostics are also good to go. I’m actually a bit surprised Muslims didn’t do a bit better given the whole monotheism thing. Happily even Atheists get more than 40% of the population, presuming they’d be interested in heaven were it an option.

I like Blow’s analysis:

One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus…

Now, there remains the possibility that some of those polled may not have understood the implications of their answers. As John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said, “The capacity of ignorance to influence survey outcomes should never be underestimated.” But I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it ... for goodness sake.

Having been through Sunday school, I’m well aware of the range of views regarding justification. The short version of the official Lutheran view is justification via faith alone, but that good works are the fruit of such a faith. The simplest way of reconciling that view is probably just to consider faith sufficient but not necessary, it still disagrees with some of the verses but doesn’t undercut the doctrine of forgiveness.

In any event, Douthat had an eloquent post up where he argues on the meaning of Christmas and the larger Christian story:

It recounts a series of events that, if real, tells us something profound about the nature of God, and His relationship to His creatures, that we couldn't have been expected to understand or accept in precisely the same way without the Gospel narratives.

Of course a philosopher could have come up with the formulation that God is Love without the assistance of the Gospel According to Saint John, just as Aristarchus of Samos could draw up the heliocentric hypothesis without the assistance of a telescope.

Similarly other people duplicated the invention of the telescope and a love centric philosophy similarly doesn’t require a god at all. Nonetheless, this, and the specific prominence of forgiveness, is the core appeal of Christianity for me. Douthat correctly points out that the emphasis on love enhances the critique that there is too much suffering in the universe for good omnipotence.

In any event, for all of these flaws, the emphasis on love seems to have convinced a large percentage of those surveyed that good people will basically be okay, regardless of what the official theological line is. I for one take that as a tiding of comfort and joy.

December 24, 2008

Got a few comments on my “more charitable” post. Since I’m content light, and I fell asleep before managing to reply, I’ll just address them in a new post.

First, my finacee helpfully pointed out that my linking scheme made it seem as if the book was titled: “"Who Really Cares, Here's Ezra Klein Summing Up the Results." I actually wouldn’t be shocked to see a blogger book with a title like that, I’d be surprised to see it sell though.

On a more serious note, first Mecha quite effectively zings the blood comment: “I wonder what would happen to the ratio if, say, a certain class of people who just happened to trend liberal could not give blood. Like, say... people who have had gay male sex and are willing to admit it.” Err… yes, I blame the influence of hospital prescribed narcotics for not thinking of that myself.

I don’t know if it would be enough to sway things, but the Kristof article already mentioned that homosexuals ranked high in terms of giving, so they’d probably have a disproportionate impact and should certainly be mentioned when citing that factoid in any event. I’m presently blood banned from surgeries and had been for a year because of visiting the province with Ping An village in China which is apparently a malaria risk. But those, unlike the restrictions on gays, are fair enough.

Next point key line, summarizing a bit: “'Conservatives are more likely to be pushed to give money to their churches' as a metric of 'good', which certainly might want to be weighted against all of the bad things that societal pressure can cause.” I’d acknowledge that but we’ve already won the ‘all in’ argument as it were. More liberal counties, states, and countries are generally better places to live if you’re poor (albeit with serious affordable housing problems). Going by charitable giving vs. charitable giving, liberals are taking on a tougher fight. But I think it’s a worthwhile one to consider, if we can win this one, then we can completely destroy the argument that regardless of moral merit of the restrictions, traditional social controls lead to better behavior.

Last point: “Finally, on the religious point, charity is giving to others for their benefit, and not yours. Not, essentially, paying dues.” I know I’ve given on occasion to non-religious causes I support with not so much a happy heart as one that just wants to pay my bit and have the fundraiser go away. Similarly from personal observation I think that bigger regular donors to Churches often are not those motivated by fear of punishment or the like (Not sure if that’s true of massive one time gifts). I would buy that probably those that put the most emphasis on tithe or go to hell are probably the least like to be charitable with intakes, but I’d generally just prefer to measure charitable output.

s a person who generates because they love so much a better person than one who gives because they think what goes around comes around? Probably, but I’m a bit too utilitarian to really care. My ideal measure would be to see how much the charity directly helped people, but that’s pretty hard to judge, let alone across categories. That said, it would be interesting to see some data on why people think they give and as you say to cross-reference motive with the output.

Image of offering tray by Daniel Hoye used under a Creative Commons license

October 31, 2008

I’ve been watching an interesting fight between libertarian Will Wilkinson and conservative Ross Douthaht. They’re fighting over Jonathan Haidt’s concept of five pillars of morality: harm/care; fairness/reciprocity; in-group; authority; and purity. Liberals tend to like the first two, conservatives go for all five. Wilkinson gives a great quick summary of Haidt’s larger argument:

As Jon notes, many liberals wonder why the in-group, authority, and purity dimensions of the moral sense count as moral at all. Why doesn’t harm/care and fairness/reciprocity just exhaust the moral field? With characteristic ecumenism, Jon cautions us against underestimating the function of the conservative sentiments in a successful society. “The great conservative insight,” Jon says, “is that order is really hard to achieve, it’s really precious, and really ready to lose.”

The lesson, it seems to me, is that it is dangerous to become too thoroughly liberal, for that way chaos lies. What Jon needs to show is that there is a threshold on the conservative channels of the moral equalizer below which social stability is threatened. In the talk, he barely gestures toward evidence to this effect... Indeed, my sense is that the societies in which the space between high liberal settings and low conservative settings is the greatest–that is, the most imbalanced–are by and large the best places for human beings to live...

If the conservative dimensions are so important, Jon needs to explain why the people of the advanced market democracies are so much more liberal than they used to be, so much less conservative, and yet so much less disordered (i.e., less violence, less war, etc.)...

But I think he’s making a mistake if he think his work points toward the importance of the conservative sentiments. It’s pointing me toward a clearer grasp of the ecological conditions under which those sentiments are functional and adaptive. And we aren’t in them.

Anyhow, I’m not a libertarian, I tend to think there is some utility in in-group and authority although I certainly thing they’re far less important than harm-care or fairness. However, I do agree with Wilkinson on Purity. I think purity has a few uses: preventing self-harm, avoiding getting on a slippery slope for harming others, avoiding disease and food poisoning, and . However, the first two are just functions of harm/care and can be treated as such. The third is where the evolutionary advantage of purity comes in, but we have science now to tell us what’s actually healthy, it’s time to put away childish things.

To be fair to conservatives, Haidt does note that liberals can go for purity when it comes to organic food or not watching television or such. When these things have a basis in health, fine; but I’m quite willing to say that while it’s fine to argue about what we should eat or watch, don’t get self-righteous about it. Most of us have our guilty pleasures and in moderation that’s fine.

Interestingly, I think Christianity makes a partial break with purity rules. Jesus is constantly breaking purity restrictions, sometimes even foolishly so; sorry Jesus, but we should actually wash our hands before eating. Not a moral thing, but a good idea nonetheless. I think a lot of Christian theology gets at the idea that none of us is really pure, so we should stop judging others for lack of purity. However, Jesus as the perfect sacrificial lamb brings those issues back to the fore. I should also note that I’ve heard that the Gospel depiction of Judaism’s purity rules in practice is rather exaggerated.

July 08, 2008

"There should not be any permanent bases in Iraq unless these bases are under Iraqi control," Rubaie said. "We would not accept any memorandum of understanding with [the U.S.] side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops’ withdrawal from Iraq."

That quote is from the a Post article by Ernesto Londono and Dan Eggen, and Ackerman adds that al-Rubaie has been national-security advisor under the past three premiers. Wacky. Anyways, in addition to other Arab governments and the Iraqi people, according to some perhaps sketchy sources serious pressure is apparently now coming from the top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sadr is a top rival to Sistani, even to the extent of allegedly having some of the Grand Ayatollah’s people killed, but they seem to come down on the same side on this one.

I rather doubt the Bush administration would sign on for an agreement that had firm withdrawal conditions. Instead they’d probably try to renew the U.N. authority. That’s actually a perfectly reasonable option as it will leave the decision in the hands of the next administration,possibly one more willing to consult Congress. Alternately, Kevin Drum notes that they may just have an easily fudge-able set of withdrawal guidelines. That’ll depend on whether this timeline talk is genuine or merely a response to outside pressure to be slipped out of at the first opportunity.

June 25, 2008

So an interesting study on American religious beliefs came out the other day. The most widely discussed finding is that one in five American athiests believe in a higher power and thus are in all likelihood agnostics. On the other hand it sounds like more people don’t believe in God than identify as atheist so there’s some confusion both ways. 92% of the population believes in some sort of God or spiritual force but only 51% are fairly certain said God is a person one can have a relationship with. Also, apparently 20% of the Christian population speaks in tongues from time to time, which surprises me. Political findings were about what you’d expect.

For the Curious here’s the full report. Anyhow, I personally was raised Lutheran (we’re classified as mainline protestant) and not surprisingly have the basic demographics of that group. I’ve stuck with that religion although as long time readers can guess I tend to be pretty open about such things and tend to get rather angry when people start saying that religion is necessary to be a good person or a good American.

Happily the survey found the American population is less dogmatic than I might have guessed:

Most Americans agree with the statement that many religions – not just their own – can lead to eternal life. Among those who are affiliated with a religious tradition, seven-in-ten say many religions can lead to eternal life. This view is shared by a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including more than half of members of evangelical Protestant churches (57%). Only among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon groups (57%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (80%), which together comprise roughly 2.4% of the U.S. adult population [are exceptions].

I’m curious whether people mean other denominations or other religions but the question did say religions. There are similar trends in whether there can be multiple interpretations of their religion. This post is long enough already, so I’ll wrap it up saying that I think arguing over whether religion is good or bad is asking the wrong question. I do believe that some aspects cause more harm than good: belief in exclusive access to morality, obsessions with purity, orthodoxy, anti-empiricism, etc. The aspects aren’t just introduced by big bad "organized religion," at least with Christianity I’m betting some of them were there in Jesus’s original teaching and not just incorrectly attributed to him. Happily it seems that many Americans are at least in part rejecting these aspects, whatever their source.

June 07, 2008

I am feeling way too lazy to put up cuts (I really need to do a macro to handle the LJ-cut part automatically), so I’ll keep this basically spoiler free.

The most recent Battlestar Gallactica episode was most pleasing, and it came on the heels of another episode that had my favorite guest star. This is quite good, as I was worried by when two episodes ago one of my favorite characters did something both massively stupid and in my view quite out of character. That sort of thing is quite common when you’re dealing with prophecies, which is why I tend to worry about fate driven plotlines. Anyways, based on these last two eps I’ll forgive you BSG.

Anyhow, in extremely vague spoilers, my idea of the Cylon master plan was that they were trying to essentially set up a narrative by which human and Cylon would ultimately live together. I’m going to modify that view to say that it also appears that that this exodus is also meant to be a time of hard testing to judge the worthiness of humanity and perhaps Cylons as well.

Also, I approve that Baltar is now not just trying to sleep with most any available female but that he also attempts to subvert anyone given the opportunity.

May 14, 2008

David Brooks drew some attention with an op-ed arguing that science’s biggest challenge to religion will not be atheism but instead what he calls neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

On the cultural side, I don’t agree that “neural Buddhism” represents some new great challenge to religious belief. It will undermine the faith of people whose spirituality relies exclusively on their ecstatic feelings – and that is a good thing for religion. If science can describe those feelings, it is likely that it can soon induce them in people...

If neural Buddhism comes, it will be an invitation for American religion to move away from its emotionalism (and obscurantism) and back to serious theological reflection. I can’t wait.

I disagree. I’m skeptical that any mass-movement is based primarily on intellectual pursuits such as "serious theological reflection." Elite movements are happy to do that sort of thing to be sure, but emotionalism is a sounder base for a mass movement. As an example, I’d cite the Christian holiday of Pentecost where the disciples were accused of being drunk rather than of stretching their attempts to connect Jesus with past prophecies for example.

Instead I’m betting that religions not compatible with these ideas will focus on social/cultural aspects. There’s some mystical tie in there too, rituals aren’t just included to fill time. However, on the whole I think the social dynamics will be harder to study and thus won’t be included in the earlier versions of reproducible neural Buddhism.

April 25, 2008

The idea that evolution-by-natural-selection somehow disproves religion in general, or theism more specifically, is basically preposterous. The idea that the mechanism of natural selection, in which the development of man requires millions of years of strife and suffering and death in the animal kingdom, poses a specific challenge to Christian beliefs about the nature of God is more plausible, and warrants a more serious response than the "hey, evolution is too compatible with a belief in designer God" rejoinder that some Christian apologists, D’Souza included, often employ.

Specifically he thinks it challenges the idea of "the fall" and offers three retorts: 1) animals don’t matter, 2) sin affected animals on a fall prior to human’s (apparently C.S. Lewis’s favored belief), 3) the fall ran both backwards and forward in time.

I personally am not attached to the concept of the fall and only tend to like the story in a subversive freedom isn’t free way, but nice to see actual logical engagement. As with most everything else, I don’t tend to find concepts that interesting unless they’re falsifiable and Douthat has rather different views than I do but may be similarly inclined on that point.

Anyways, several commenters also point out that through natural selection and other means the idea of a omnipotent+benevolent god is both falsifiable and fairly obviously untrue. I’m willing to write-off silly paradoxes but even then it’d be possible to design a universe with both freedom and much less suffering than in our present one. On the other hand my main problem with a lot of liberal theology is that it just tends to take all the falsifiable statements away which often just leaves mush behind, nice friendly mush to be sure, but still mush.

Anyways, I’m going to continue to mostly avoid theology on this blog, but I reserve the right to occasionally comment on articles or posts I like.

December 07, 2007

As some of you know, one of the U.S. Republican candidates, Mitt Romney, is a Mormon. I’m personally willing to consider them a sect of Christianity, but many evangelicals don’t. And, unlike me, evangelicals often vote on dogma. So, he’s making a speech to try to convince Evangelicals to move

So here’s a quote from his speech:

I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end -- where all men and all churches are treated as equal -- where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice.

Wait, no, that was JFK’s speech where he was trying to deal with the ’Catholic issue.’ Here’s Romney’s speech:

I know, I know. He’s just doing what he has to do. Evangelical base and all that. But I’m not religious, and yet, mirabile dictu, I stillmanage to support freedom, have a conscience, and understand the law. I’m tired of people implying otherwise.

November 27, 2007

This discussion covered some differences between American and Europe. It
basically went along the lines I thought: American Muslims tend to be better
integrated and more prosperous than European Muslims. This can drive
radicalism. One difference a questioner pointed out is that Americans might
think more of integration in a more pluralistic sense while Europeans may think
of it more in a complete assimilation sense.

That said, this can't entirely be credited to the American model, as Matt
Yglesias (not finding the post) has noted the Mexican-American population is more comparable to the
Muslim European population in terms of often being brought in on menial labor.
For perhaps a better analogy, one questioner, Michael Werz from Georgetown, made an between second generation
radicalization in Europe to African Americans and Islam in 1968 with the Nation
of Islam and such. Where the issue was really one of civil rights and
affirmative action and not interfaith dialog. Similarly, the bombers in the
UK were from secular families and while radicalized in Europe had little
association with local mosques.

Enough context. Here's some interesting raw data from Ceri Peach, the
specifics are often hard to get as governments often don't track religion or
even ethnicity. The Muslim population is about 21 million with a third being
'old Muslim' groups that date back to the Ottoman Empire. The other 14 million
are more tied in to the guest worker phenomenon. The Muslim population is also
younger than Europeans in general. Not surprisingly, the population is also heterogeneous: by size there's the most Turks (mostly in Germany), secondly North
Africans (mostly into France), finally South Asians into the U.K.

After the break, more from Ceri Peach and some highlights from the other speakers: